An encephalocele can be generally described as a hole or similar injury to the skull where the brain and brain lining herniate out from the interior of the skull to the exterior of the skull through such hole or other injury. This defect can result from a variety of factors, including congenital causes, tumors, infections, and other traumas to the skull where the cranial vault is compromised causing the brain and brain lining to push out from the interior of the skull.
There are two primary methods for repairing an encephalocele. The first method involves repairing the encephalocele using a patch that is grafted to the outside of the skull. The second method involves repairing the encephalocele by using a patch that is grafted on the inside of the skull. In general, as the size of the hole increases, the more likely it is that the encephalocele will need to be repaired using the inside repair method. However, many of the currently available encephalocele patches and patch construction techniques have a number of drawbacks. For example, to repair larger encephaloceles with the inside repair method typically requires using a rigid material such as bone or metal that is adequately firm to prevent the graft from herniating back through the hole in the skull. Bone and metal grafts have a number of drawbacks that make those materials difficult to work with. In particular, bone is difficult to work with because it first must be transplanted from another area of the skull and then shaped down to fit the encephalocele. Likewise, metal has its own problems including edges that can catch on other materials used in the graft and metal creates artifacts on imaging which make observation of the graft difficult.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for an encephalocele repair device that can be easily adapted to treat encephaloceles of varying size and is substantially radiolucent. These and other features and advantages of the present invention will be explained and will become obvious to one skilled in the art through the summary of the invention that follows.